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The Miracle of the Found Wedding Ring

This article was first published in the West Douglas County Record on March 31, 2011:

Anyone who has lost his or her wedding ring knows the awful, sinking feeling I knew for one year and eight months. At my job at Donnelly Manufacturing in Alexandria, we can’t wear finger jewelry on the production floor, and one weekend in July 2009 I looked for my ring in the usual place where I kept it during the week. Where was it? Suddenly a terrible chain of events came into focus in my memory. The previous Monday I had discovered at work that I was wearing my ring, so I wrapped it up in tape and put it in my toolbox. Sometime later, I accidentally dumped part of the toolbox’s contents on the floor and quickly scooped them up, forgetting to look for the most precious thing in the box! Finally, when I discovered the ring was missing, I thought for sure that the ring had tumbled out of my toolbox, and since it was wrapped up in tape, it would have looked like any other wad of scrap. It probably had been swept up and didn’t exist anymore.

In a way, that was one of the worst things about it. I would have rather thought that it had been picked up and appreciated by some stranger instead of being unceremoniously swept up with the trash and incinerated. As it was, I gradually adjusted to the loss of the ring. My wife, bless her heart, was very gracious about the whole thing and took it in stride. Life went on, we focused on other things, and though I always felt a bit dejected whenever I thought of my wedding ring, I thought of it less and less. We occasionally talked about finding a replacement ring and having it blessed, perhaps in connection with a renewal of vows. I was even well on my way to thinking that a replacement ring could be as good as the original after all.

Then the miracle happened. Not long ago in mid-March 2011 I was heading off to work early for some overtime, when I put something back in my toolbox, and suddenly out flipped a wad of tape with something in it that I never thought I would see again: my ring! Of course my toolbox had been the first place I looked, but I had never thought of lifting up the tray that sits in the top of the toolbox and looking underneath. For 20 months the tape with my ring in it had been stuck to the bottom of the tray! Of course that means that I had hundreds of chances to lose the ring any time I opened the toolbox. I was on the verge of being late, but I was taking no chances: I rushed inside, giddy to the point of goofiness, and told my wife, “It’s a miracle! I found my ring! Here, put it in a safe place!”

I’m overjoyed to have my ring back, but of course life would have still been okay if it had really been gone forever. Losing a ring is nothing like losing a person. Do we treasure the people around us more than things? What about Jesus Christ, who gave His life for us? Do we treasure Him and His Kingdom more than earthly possessions? “For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also,” Matthew 6:21. “Or what woman, if she has ten sliver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp and sweep the house and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin which I had lost!’ In the same way, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents.” Luke 15:8-10 NASB. My lost ring was one of my least favorite topics of conversation ever: I only remember even telling my wife, my mom, and one other person. But now that it’s found I enjoy telling everybody!